Last month, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced on CNN that she planned to sue Fox News for defaming the city of Paris with their false claims about Muslim-controlled “no-go zones.” (And I should add that conservatives all over the media are still repeating these false claims.)

Today in Paris, the City Council voted to go ahead with the lawsuit, which promises to provide much amusement to us connoisseurs of inadvertent right wing humor.

Lawyers for Fox News say they’ll fight the suit, of course, because fear-mongering lies are protected free speech in the US.

A law firm representing Fox News said the broadcaster would fight any lawsuit brought in Paris.

“The decision by the City of Paris to bring legal proceedings against a United States news organization is antithetical to free speech,” according to a statement provided by Fox News from lawyer Dori Ann Hanswirth of the Hogan Lovells law firm. “Fox News will invoke every protection afforded it under all applicable laws.”

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour today that she plans to sue Fox News for defaming Paris with their false claims about “no-go zones.” (Claims that were then repeated in Britain by Gov. Bobby Jindal.)

Any day right wing smear merchant Chuck C. Johnson (who is NOT ME) gets so tweezed that he threatens to sue me has to count as a good day. Today I noticed that he was spewing a whole lot of obviously made-up talking points about Ferguson on Twitter, repeating his thoroughly discredited charges that Michael Brown had a juvenile criminal record. So I tweeted this:

There goes @ChuckCJohnson inventing more bullshit stories about Ferguson for attention.

CuriousLurkerre: #178 NJDhockeyfan So sorry to hear about this. St. Jude Children's hospital says: Hopefully he'll be in that 85-90% and live a long & productive life. It's gonna be hell on him & your sis though. I'll say a ...

Loesch’s ascendancy, aided by the rise of the Tea Party and the star power of Andrew Breitbart (as well as her own hard work and penchant for provocation), hit several other stumbling blocks this year. Following pressure from critics over her remarks about U.S. troops who were videotaped urinating on Taliban corpses, Loesch’s appearances on CNN dried up, although the network insists there was no connection.

In August, at the height of Rep. Todd “Legitimate Rape”Akin’s notoriety, Loesch tweeted Akin advising him not to appear on fellow CNNer Piers Morgan’s program, then “reached out to the campaign to confirm” Akin had canceled his appearance, and would appear on her radio show instead. Former Mediaite Managing Editor Colby Hall called foul, and Morgan defended Loesch on Twitter, but Loesch hasn’t been on CNN since then. Media Matters noted that, in an August CNN online article, Loesch is cited as a “conservative radio host,” and not a CNN contributor.

The network confirmed, in November, that Dana Loesch is still a CNN contributor, and multiple sources at CNN say there is no organized blackball, that booking decisions are made by the executive producers of each show, but that poaching Akin might not have endeared her to those EPs.

The incident with Piers Morgan and Todd Akin isn’t the only case in which Loesch or her husband have attacked and/or sabotaged other CNN personnel; in March, hubbie Chris called CNN host Soledad O’Brien an antisemite, and breitbart.com published dozens of articles viciously attacking her.

Conservative talk radio host and commentator Dana Loesch sued the owner of the conservative website breitbart.com Friday, claiming that although her relationship with the news and opinion aggregating website had gone “tragically awry,” Breibart.cοm LLC refused to let her work for the company or anyone else, forcing her into “indentured servitude in limbo.”

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court here, seeks at least $75,000 in damages, as well as a judge’s declaration that her contract had expired.

The suit says that difficulties managing the Breitbart “media ‘empire’” or ideological conflicts or both had spiked the working relationship, creating a “increasingly hostile” work environment. When Loesch tried to terminate her work agreement in September, Breitbart refused and extended the agreement by a year, the suit says.

In a new filing (PDF) this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon expressed his displeasure with a decision by defendants in a defamation lawsuit to appeal his denial of their motion to dismiss.

At issue is former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod’s defamation lawsuit against blogger Andrew Breitbart and one of his colleagues, Larry O’Connor. Sherrod sued both men in Washington federal court in Feb. 2011, claiming they posted a deceptively edited clip of Sherrod online that eventually got her fired.

Breitbart and O’Connor moved to dismiss the case under a District of Columbia law barring strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs. The anti-SLAPP law is designed to stop litigation aimed at chilling protected speech. Leon denied the motion in July in two-sentence minute orders. After the defendants’ appealed, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit asked Leon on Feb. 7 to explain his decision.

In the statement of reasons filed today, Leon said he denied the motion because the law, which went into effect last March, couldn’t be applied retroactively to Sherrod’s case, which was filed the month before. Even if the law could be applied retroactively, Leon wrote that the defendants missed their time window to file the motion.

“Regrettably,” Leon wrote, “it appears that the defendants will not be satisfied with this Court’s ruling until a considerable amount of additional judicial and litigant resources are expended on its ‘novel,’ if not overreaching, motion.”

TPM has details on the lawsuit filed against Andrew Breitbart by Shirley Sherrod.

Three defendants are named: Breitbart, breitbart.tv head Larry O’Connor and a “John Doe,” who allegedly edited the original video of Sherrod’s speech, and “whose identity has been concealed by the other Defendants,” according to the complaint.

The complaint alleges that the defendants “defamed Mrs. Sherrod by editing and publishing an intentionally false and misleading clip,” which went on to do “extensive and irreparable harm to Mrs. Sherrod and her reputation.”

The suit asks for Breitbart’s post and the video to be pulled down by Breitbart and O’Connor, as well as for an order to prevent the defendants from “engaging in future tortious conduct against Mrs. Sherrod,” and seeks compensatory damages of no less than $5,001 and additional punitive damages.

Aunty Entity Dragonre: #31 LudwigVanQuixote Just watch as the appeals for financial aid on Fox News, Malkin, TNR, etc etc start raising funds for him. Also watch as more scum from Breitbart's gang try to throw even more slime on her and ...

In July of last year, Shirley Sherrod said she was going to sue Andrew Breitbart over the deceptively edited video that falsely portrayed her as a “racist,” and yesterday at CPAC she made good on that vow.

Andrew Breitbart, the owner of several conservative Web sites, was served at the conference on Saturday with a lawsuit filed by Shirley Sherrod, the former Agriculture Department employee who lost her job last year over a video that Mr. Brietbart posted at his site biggovernment.com.

The video was selectively edited so that it appeared Ms. Sherrod was confessing she had discriminated against a farmer because he was white. In the suit, which was filed in Washington on Friday, Ms. Sherrod says the video has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work.

Mr. Breitbart said in a statement that he “categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech.”

Last year Pamela Geller injected herself into the case of Rifqa Bary, a teenage runaway and Christian convert who claimed her Muslim parents were planning to kill her. (The Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently investigated these claims and found “no evidence whatsoever of alleged abuse or threats of death made by the girl’s parents.”)

As part of her usual hateful rabble-rousing, Geller repeatedly labeled the attorney for Bary’s parents as a terrorist sympathizer who was “appointed by CAIR.”

A Muslim attorney on one side of the Rifqa Bary dispute has filed a $10 million defamation lawsuit against Orlando attorney John Stemberger, an activist Christian attorney who worked for the other side.

The suit was filed by Omar Tarazi in federal court in Columbus, Ohio, Friday. It names John Stemberger of the conservative Florida Family Policy Council.

Also being sued is a blogger from elsewhere, Pamela Oshry, who writes under the name Pamela Geller at the website atlasshrugged2000 and penned scathing anti-Muslim posts after Rifqa ran away from home in July 2009, saying she was afraid her Muslim parents would kill her for converting to Christianity. …

In the suit, Tarazi accuses Stemberger of falsely claiming on Fox News that Tarazi was associated with a Columbus-area mosque that had ties to terrorists. It also says Stemberger defamed Tarazi by saying Rifqa’s parents fired qualified court-appointed Ohio attorneys to use only one – Tarazi – who was paid by a pro-Muslim group in Ohio, the Council on American-Islamic Relations or CAIR.

Tarazi was paid by no one, according to the suit. …

Oshry [Geller] published web posts that falsely said Tarazi had joined Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, and received payments from ” ‘criminal’ organizations with ‘ties’ to terrorists,” according to the suit.

The attorney being sued, John Stemberger, is apparently also under investigation by the Florida Bar for possible ethics violations in the case:

Stemberger on Tuesday called the suit “ridiculous and frivolous.”

“This is just an attempt at grandstanding after a loss,” he said.

Stemberger acknowledged but would not discuss an investigation by the Florida Bar into possible ethics violations by him for statements he made about the case.

flatspinI don't think bloggers should ever sue each other for defamation and Blair's done himself no favours here at all but linking to Darryl Mason at 'The Orstrahyun'? Is this the persistent troll D.P. Mason a.k.a. LeftyLatteLover who was banned ...

This is the LGF Pages posting bookmarklet. To use it, drag this button to your browser's bookmark bar, and title it 'LGF Pages' (or whatever you like). Then browse to a site you want to post, select some text on the page to use for a quote, click the bookmarklet, and the Pages posting window will appear with the title, text, and any embedded video or audio files already filled in, ready to go.

Or... you can just click this button to open the Pages posting window right away.

Justice Department Spokesman Marc Raimondi released the following statement Tuesday: "Three documents - a criminal Information, a plea agreement, and a statement of facts - were filed today in the United States District Court for the Western District of ...

Morgan Whitaker exposes where wingnuts are getting their "information" on "the evil, un-American, Kenyan, Marxist Muslim" Obama. This story is about a year old, but its still relevant today. David Jackson, of Belmont, NC, does not like President Obama. He ...

This is a random post, but since I did a little bit of research, I decided to write up a short summary that may be useful for others. Ever since the 1988 carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin showed ...

What, precisely, is this woman's major malfunction? For going on 30 years, she has been the target of every strange conspiracy theory that the half-bright mind of man can dream up. She knows they're out there, pining to have ...

Jeb Bush has been adamant that he will not switch his positions on two issues, immigration and Common Core standards, that will generate conservative opposition in the Republican primaries. But he just made a major concession to conservatives on ...

The Electronic Privacy Information Center has asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Samsung over what it says is the recording of private conversations in homes through the company's television sets. The privacy rights group filed a complaint with ...

From the National Center for Science Education House File 272, introduced in the Iowa House of Representatives on February 17, 2015, and referred to the House Committee on Education, would, if enacted, prevent Iowa from adopting the Next Generation ...

When journalist Chai Jing released her documentary on China's air pollution, she probably could not have dreamed that her message would resonate so widely while boosting the share prices of so many "environmentally friendly" companies. On Monday, more than ...

I went out to the post box and found the latest issue of Nat Geo, March 2015, there with this cover photo: And the headlines: THE WAR ON SCIENCE:Climate Change does not existEvolution never happenedThe Mood Landing was fakeVaccinations can ...

Kevin talks about a pervasive industry problem - being compliant according to your auditor and their checklist, but still being highly vulnerable. One of the common faults in compliance is senior level managers who don't really know enough end up ...

Curt Schilling showed a young punk you don't mess with his daughter on twitter. Schilling's fond paternal congratulations were met with "tweets with the word rape, bloody underwear and pretty much every other vulgar and defiling word you could likely ...

In this era of raw nerves, protests and increased tensions, Americans really want leadership. It's natural for the public and the media to desperately seek out examples that appear to affirm that our nation is changing for the better. ...

By this process, you can arrive at a conclusion like this: To win the War on Women, you better put a ring on it. At CPAC, conservatives dedicated an entire panel to "The Future of Marriage." One could be ...

Earlier today interested Redditors posed questions to Poitras and Greenwald in Los Angeles, while Snowden posted from Moscow. A rare opportunity for average people to directly communicate with the (in)famous leaker.See the entire discussion HERE Redditor masondog13 asks: What's the ...

Wait a minute... watching Fox News and the Republican talking heads I learned that all Muslims are bad bad bad and in no way can Islam be interpreted as any sort of peaceful religion. news.yahoo.com OSLO (Reuters) - More than ...

For the last three years it's been my privilege to help coach a dedicated group of young women who have founded the first Women's Flat-Track Roller Derby league in Israel. They've learned, trained, fought, and worked unbelievably hard to bring ...

Added bold is all mine. this was an awkward way to go about gun control anyway. It clearly impacts the law abiding far more than felons, and is by that definition inefficient and intrusive at best. Gonna have to do ...

Frank says:

If there's ever an obscene noise to be made on an instrument, it's gonna come out of a guitar! On a sax you can play sleaze, on a bass you can play balls. But on a guitar you can be truly obscene! Lets be realistic about this, the guitar can be the single most blasphemous device on earth! The guitar makes a stink noise. That's why I like it!!